I have a small PHP application that suddenly stopped talking to its MySQL database. The break happens right at the connection step—everything else loads fine until the script tries to open the database link. Key context • Environment: plain PHP, no frameworks involved. • Database: MySQL. • Current setup: the connection credentials are written directly in the code rather than through PDO or MySQLi wrappers. What I need Pin-point the exact fault in that connection routine, correct it, and confirm that queries execute normally again. A concise explanation of what was wrong and the corrected snippet should accompany the fix so I can keep the codebase healthy in the future. If you have immediate availability and strong debugging chops with legacy-style PHP/MySQL code, this should be a quick win for both of us.